Well I think that I've recovered from last weekend's adventures. I was
actually feeling pretty good on Sunday night when I went to sleep but man was I
sore when Monday morning came around!

On Saturday Dave, I, Lisa, Bruce and Flynn got on our bikes and started
towards the coast around 10:45am. Once at the top of Old La Honda we all
pretty much felt that going all the way out to the coast and back might be just
a little more than we wanted so we agreed to do the shortened loop out to the
town of La Honda and back. With that decided we dropped down the back side of
Old La Honda and started the long glide down to the bottom. The views out to
the ocean and the weather were spectacular! The day was somewhat overcast and
a bit cool and everything was Very Green over the entire ride. Just past the
town of La Honda we turned left onto Pescadero Road and then left again onto
Alpine Road to start the trip back up over Skyline. At this point we were all
pretty glad that we'd elected to go for the shorter loop; 45 miles and ~3,000
feet of elevation gain seemed like a very sensible amount of biking, think you
very much ... :-) But we made it up to the top and back down Page Mill in good
shape. Back in Palo Alto we rewarded ourselves with a stop at Andele's for
Mexican food and beer. It's the stopping that feels so good, don't you know
... :-)

But this was just the start of the weekend's events. We still had a rock
climbing adventure to go on Sunday! Luckily Dave and I decided that he should
try on the climbing harness I bought for him at REI. It turned out to be about
six inches to small which wouldn't have done at all. But, they don't call it
Return Everything, Inc. for nothing so a quick trip and an exchange later we
had him properly outfitted and I bought an extra one as a "guest harness" for
the people arriving without. (I also figured that I needed an extra harness to
support my continuing efforts to introduce everyone I know to rock climbing.)

On Sunday morning Jun, Ralph, Rebecca and Dave met up at my house and we
started the car caravan up to Summit Rock at 8:20am -- only five minutes late
which is I think a new record for us ... :-) We got up to the Sanborn-Skyline
County Park parking lot for Summit Rock almost exactly at 9am and were greeted
with a very chilly 30mph wind coming over the ridge. Aaron joined us there and
we headed down to our crag of the day.

At Summit Rock we climbed up the gully behind the rock to get on top and set
the first top-rope anchors of the day. It's hard to over state how beautiful
the view of the Valley was. The wind had cleared out all the haze and it felt
like you could spread your arms and fly for miles. It was an absolutely
perfect day. (I'm sure that Dave or Rebecca will post references to some of
the pictures they took.)

I set about making my very first top-rope anchor. Jun vetted it with a few
comments and I was quite pleased with myself (setting anchors is a Big Thing in
rock climbing). I of course had to prove that it was safe by rappelling off to
the base of the rock. :-)

By this point John [Grigsby] and Ryk had joined us, followed quickly by Ilya,
Fred, Alan and Chris. Brian and Sean showed up a bit later and eventually we
had 11 climbers going. A Very Large group. The good news is that we had three
top ropes set up so there wasn't much waiting. And of course, what little
waiting was necessary was completely offset by being out on such a fabulous day
in the woods.

By the end of the day we'd set top-rope anchors for two more climbs for a
total of five different climbs (though Jun was the only one who did the last
crack climb, Tree Surgeon). Here's a list of all the climbs we got on along
with image references from the slide show available at
http://www.bayareaclimbers.com/OGL/Route/Skyline/Summit/Summit-ss.html:

Note that the web site swaps the names on the USC Practice Climbs #1 and #2
from the naming given in the Skyline Boulevard Rock Climber's Guide. The web
site labels the climb we did as "Santa Clara Univ PC#2.

We finally called it a day sometime around 5pm I think. Exhausted but happy
we packed up and headed off for burgers and beer.

And now you know why I woke up yesterday morning more than a little sore ...
:-)

I'm out of town the next two weekends so you'll have to arrange your own Play
Dates for the first part of April. We'll resume our adventure on April 17th
with something interesting. Jun is talking about wanting to do a
camping/climbing trip out to Consumes River Gorge near Placerville. The 17th
might be a bit early for that but we don't want it to get too late in the
season or the heat will destroy us. I'll keep you posted! In the mean time,
keep on playing!!
Casey